A Little Bit of Imagination

  Do you have a child with a latest obsession?  I do.  Correction.. The princess has twenty obsessions that she cycles through weekly, sometimes daily!  At the moment, she loves Pirates.  Jake and the Neverland Pirates from Disney JR has been making an appearance on our television set.  This show does not have as much of an educational value as I usually like to see in children's programing, but it is something that has attracted the princess' attention.  I can usually make use of any obsession.
    As I was cleaning up a Mancala game, I realized that the little pieces resembled jewels.  I gathered my supplies and got to work.  First, I cut a piece of paper into several little squares.  Then, I wrote a number on each square.  Quickly, I got to looking for something to be a treasure chest.  At this point, the Princess was intrigued; I had to think fast.  I usually prefer to prepare our activities at night, but in times like this I feel inspired and start working right away.  There was nothing that resembled a treasure box to be found! I just have to work a little faster, if I do not prepare in advance.   I settled for a small food container from the kitchen.  Lucky for me, the princess has a well-developed imagination!  I also grabbed the princess' favorite little pink purse. As I ran around, I kept hearing "What are we going to do.  What are we going to do."  At this point, you are probably wondering the same thing.
    What were doing?  A treasure hunt!  We have been working on recognizing larger numbers and counting to 100; this game was going to help us.  The princess was able to assist me with the rest of the preparations.  She counted thirty pieces of "treasure" and put them in the "treasure box."  Then, we hid those little squares throughout the living room.  It was time to play!  The idea was simple.  She was going to find a number and bring it to me and read the number.  If she got it right, she got a piece of treasure.If she did not read the number correctly, the pirate (yours truly) got a piece of treasure.  I do not recommend this win-lose method for every child, but it works well for us.  The princess decided to add a little bit more drama to the game.  She did not want to be herself, but appropriately, a princess.  I also could not just sit there and speak nicely if I was a pirate.  I had to make pirate sounds as she found the treasure. What was I thinking, trying to sit peacefully and relax;   We had a game to play! She also occasionally created a storyline for us to follow that went along with the game. 
    We were both pleased with how our little treasure hunt went.  She got to use her imagination, play princess and pirates, and practice recognizing numbers at the same time!  Sometimes preparation and guidelines are needed for a smooth game.  Other times, you can just throw things together and put both of your imaginations to good use! 

It Is My Right..

    In need for something to write on today, I searched for a news article about homeschooling.  What I found was an article about Kenya and how the government may outlaw homeschooling.  If this happens, parents could be imprisoned for  homeschooling a child.  The complete article, which has more information on this subject, can be read here.
    I often think of how lucky we are to be able to home school, but until now this has merely been for financial reasons.  Some families do not home-school because it is not something that would work for them or they do not have the desire to do it, but then there are parents who would love that opportunity but are unable to afford for a parent to stay at home.  I have always been thankful to be able to stay home, but I never thought twice about my right to home-school.  What I have to say on this subject is simple.  There has been a lot going on in the last few years that have given Americans much to debate over; however, we have rights that citizens of many other countries to do not.  I am very thankful for my ability and right to home-school! 

Sight Words

    Sight words are a large part of our planned school time.  In fact, the only other topic we currently have a daily scheduled time for is writing practice.  Math is mostly taught through the day and science is thrown in sporadically and also taught as a teaching opportunity arises.  We started homeschooling slowly.  She was learning without me going out of my way to teach her, so I was not in a rush. The only things I was concerned with planning were the topics that i didn't feel came as naturally in our day or  needed a little extra practice.  Sight word reading is one of those things. 
    I tried to approach sight words in a more natural method, as I have other things, but it just didn't work.  The princess loves stories!  She has always had an incredible attention span when it comes to sitting for a book, but I found that she does not like her stories interrupted for me to point out words.  I don't blame her! It is important that a story has a smooth flow.  If I stop between pages to show her the words I read, the flow disappears.  We found out that games with a focus on high frequency reading words works well for us.
    I introduced our first set of words by making a sight word matching game.  It was incredibly easy.  The princess painted on the front side of  index cards.  I then cut each index card in half and wrote words one the back, making sure to write each word twice. It worked well for a very long time.  After a while I decided to add a little variety and found a few ideas on pinterest that have helped make practicing sight word reading fun.
    Today we did something with these sight words.  My idea originated from The Teacher wife. A teacher used paper chains to track how many books students read, encouraging them to read 100 books before the end of the school year.   I had previously cut fifty strips of construction paper and wrote sight words on 12 of them.  When we started our school time today, I showed her these strips of paper and told her we were making a paper chain with the words she reads correctly.  Every time she got a word correct we added a link to the chain using that strip of paper and a stapler.  I had been so excited to introduce this to her that I was thrilled she took to it.  Out of the twelve words, she read eleven correctly!  The length of the chain excited her.  This activity will be repeated once a week until she has read 100 words.  We will call it Word Chain Wednesday and it should work as a reward system for all of that sight word practice we do through the week.  I am already brainstorming for a special thing we can do to celebrate that 100th word!